Daily Search Forum Recap: November 23, 2010

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google's Site Operator Now Less Buggy & More Accurate?
In the past years, SEOs have known not to use the site command or operator, i.e. site:www.domain.com in Google to determine the number of pages indexed for their site. Instead, they relied more on the Google Webmaster Tools area, in the Sitemaps section, that shows how many pages were indexed versus how many pages were submitted in the XML feed. Although the Sitemap method is not 100% accurate in showing how many pages are indexed

How To Prevent The "Googlebot Found an Extremely High Number" Message
Receiving a message in Google Webmaster Tools that reads "Googlebot found an extremely high number" is not uncommon for large sites. We covered it many times, including back in 2008 but the big question is how do you avoid it? It is not a simple answer. Often there is not much one can do outside of trying to restructure their navigation and site architecture. But John Mueller from Google did post some advice in a

Google Maps Transit Data Not Working
Dave from Google posted in two Google Maps Help threads that the public transit layer is not working on Google Maps. There are several reports that it hasn't been properly working in any of the cities for the past few days. Dave from Google replies yesterday saying: Yes we're still working on a fix. We generally avoid giving ETAs on a fix like this because software can be a complex business, and things sometimes take

Google Street View Snowmobile Version
Spotted via Google Blogoscoped Forums, @kas_tweets tweeted that there is a Google Street View snowmobile on display. I guess how else will Google maps all the upcoming ski trails for the winter? This was actually done for the Olympics last year, you can see a video from Google below: Forum discussion at Google Blogoscoped Forums.

Pre-Thanksgiving Google Turkey Logo: Ina Garten
We cover most of the Google logos (aka Doodles) on the Google.com web site. Today, there is an interesting one. A pre-Thanksgiving logo that doesn't lead to a search results page, but instead leads to Thanksgiving recipes by Ina Garten. I believe the logo was alos designed by Ina Garten. When you click on the logo, it takes you to google.com/landing/thanksgiving. On the page, it shows recipes but also links to a search result from